Change Management Best Practices & World-Class Change Deployment Methodology
February 24, 2017 1 Comment
Customer Experience, Marketing, CRM, Corporate Innovation Best Practices
January 31, 2014 Leave a comment
The following blog was written to provide a simple primer on Change Management for Top Executives. It is written so you ‘get it’ in 15 minutes or less of reading this article.
As a business leader, have you ever encountered the following challenges within your company:?
1. Implemented new technology or IT system and people failed to adopt & fully utilize it?
2. Implemented new processes and ways of doing business and your employees continued to follow the older methods?
3. Your competition continually seems to be evolving and innovating, developing new and more effective ways of doing business, while your company culture resists change and new ways of doing business?
The remainder of this blog is dedicated to sharing some of the techniques to get your organization to embrace and be supportive of change. These change management techniques are based on my years of implementing change at organizations like Macy’s, American Express, Intuit, AT&T, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oracle, CBS Interactive, Wells Fargo, and numerous other Fortune 500 companies.
Topics in this blog:
1) What is Change Management – A Simple Definition
2) Why is it Important?
3) Why is change resisted by so many employees?
4) Do all employees approach change the same way and how do you harness the power of the innovators and change ‘early adopters’?
5) How Change Management Helps Accelerate Change
6) Change Management Mitigates the Impact on Productivity while Implementing Change
7) The Organizational Change Model Facilitates Change Success & Greater Business Results
8) Steps in the Organizational Change Model Ensure Change Project Success
9) The Importance of the eight (8) Change Management Steps
10) Summary – Change Management & Innovation Requires a 360°, holistic approach driven by skilled and experienced change management professionals
Bottom Line: Without proper education and motivation, change is naturally resisted within the workplace by all but a few.
As depicted by the above chart, employees range from ardent resisters to innovators. Change management solicits the support from innovators and early adopters to help diffuse organizational change to the remainder of the organization.
Change management not only removes obstacles to change, it helps develop enthusiasm and excitement for accelerated change in the future.
By having a robust change management methodology and plan, disruptions to business productivity can be minimized until the desired change state is achieved.
By having a robust change management methodology and model, change success and enhanced business performance can be nearly guaranteed.
Change projects must have clearly defined and measurable steps that align with the overall change methodology. This approach greatly enhances the chance that the change project will be successful as well as facilitates the achievement of desired-positive business outcomes.
The next set of graphs highlight the importance of each step in the change management (project) process:
Step #1
Step #2:
Step #3:
Step #4:
Step #5:
Step #6:
Step #7:
Step #8:
In summary, change management requires leveraging a proven change methodology, skilled change management practitioners and a holistic approach to implementing corporate innovation and change. The above is a simple depiction of a best practice approach I have used on many change management projects at many of the Fortune 500 companies in the US.
January 17, 2014 1 Comment
Analysis and Management of the key decision makers and influencers in any strategic and long-term sale is crucial for success and for obtaining that BIG SALES CONTRACT WIN. This type of analysis of multi-million dollar & strategic sales deals is a common practice of the top revenue generating firms throughout the world including Accenture, IBM, PricewatehouseCoopers, McKinsey, General Electric, Deliotte, KPMG, etc. Through this proven sales analysis technique called Sales Influencer Mapping or Power mapping, you can quickly ascertain the following:
{Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}:
Directly related to the last bullet (#4) above, the first and key step to influencer mapping for longer-term strategic sales is determining the sales influencer landscape as follows:
Take Chart #1 below that represents a strategic sale of over $1.2MM to a potential pharmaceutical client. Our strategic sales team consisted of four of us attempting to sell a strategic roadmap for our client to enable an enhanced direct to consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical marketing model.
{Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}:
In step one, we carefully analyzed the client company organization and quickly determined that Dan Danilla, as VP of Customer Management, was the Economic Buyer for this sale and had adequate allocated budget to actually buy our services. You will notice the “E” noted below his name in box #1 for Economic buyer per the above power mapping legend.
Gary West was determined to be responsible for the project’s delivery and success, so he was labeled at the Decision Maker “D” in box #1 below his name/organizational box.
Russ Porter was determined as being one of the signatories of the contract, so he is marked with an “A” for being a contract Approver in box #1 below his name/organizational box.
Lastly, since Matt Gandy has a great social relationship with both Dan Danilla (Economic Buyer) and Gary West and is often called for professional advice by both, we marked him as a key influencer for this sales deal with an “I” in box #1 below his name/organizational box.
Chart #2 represents Step #2 in Sales Power Mapping {Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}::
In this step we assign our company team members to effectively manage the key influencer client relationships based on personality matching and previous interaction history.
In the above example, I (Steven Jeffes-SJ) was assigned to cover Dan Danilla (Economic Buyer) as I have had very good previous interactions with him and he seemed to like my ideas/insights.
Likewise Brian Grant (BG) was assigned to Gary West (Decision Maker), Me assigned also to Kathy Pang (Influencer), Mary Bello (MB) to Russ Porter (Approver) and Sam Snead (SS) to Matt Gandy as they head out for drinks together occasionally and have a budding social relationship.
Chart #3 represents Step #3 in Sales Power Mapping {Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}::
In this step we accomplish two bits of sales analysis as follows:
1) We determine what our previous interaction with each person has been like and how have they reacted to our team members in the past (on average). This is represented by box #3 above “Relationship Interaction”. In box 3 for each client team member, we noted “*” for having a positive/trusted relationship with Dan Danilla, a “+” for having a good relationship with Gary West, a “+” also for Kathy Pang as she has a good relationship with Steve Jeffes, and “-“ with Russ Porter as he has been cool and stand-offish with team members and a “=” with Matt Gandy as he has been neutral in our previous interactions with him.
2) Our second step in this phase is to determine what each person’s impressions are of our Firm’s capabilities based on any previous statements. We color the same box #3 with colors Green for Positive, Yellow for Neutral, Red for the person having negative impressions of our firm. These colors are noted above in box #3 for each client team member – Dan Danilla (Green), Gary West (Green), Kathy Pang (Yellow), Russ Porter (Red), and Matt Gandy (White for undetermined).
Chart #4 represents Step #4 in Sales Power Mapping {Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}::
In this fourth step we accomplish the following:
Determine the extent to which we have had contact with each client sales team member. This step is critically important in order to be able to develop an effective action plan to help develop better relationships with each client team member. In addition to noting the frequency of contact, detailed notes must be cultivated from each strategic sales team member to determine the following for each client team member:
1) What previous concerns has the client team member mentioned when dealing with our team or when our potential solution was presented?
2) What previous likes or preferences has the client team member mentioned when dealing with our team or when our potential solution was presented?
3) What type of personality type is this client team member – analytical, introverted, social, extroverted, etc. (Should also be used in matching team members in step #2 above)
4) What checkpoints or process steps is this client team member looking to ‘check off’ as part of this product/solution evaluation?
5) Are there any other team stakeholders missing in developing the above organization chart that should now be added?
In the fifth and final step of this process, we perform the following:
A) Aggregate and summarize the above sales analysis including deal strengths & weaknesses
B) Develop a Sales Action Plan
C) Estimate Deal Probability Closure %
The picture that summarizes the sales analysis can be shown as follows {Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}::
A) Summarize Sales Analysis:
The summary of our sales analysis (as depicted in Chart #5 above) for this sale deal is as follows:
B) Develop a Sales Action Plan (Sample):
The action plan that aligns to our above sales analysis for this sales deal is as follows {Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}::
C) Estimate Deal Probability Closure %:
The final step is to estimate, utilizing all of the above insights, as well as major sales deal assets and liabilities, the probability that this sales deal will close favorably (as a win) for our firm as follows {Click on Chart for a larger/clearer image}::
The bottom line to sales power (influencer) mapping is that the best sales companies and your most formidable competitors are using this level of sales analysis and action planning in order to win that strategic multi-million $$$ deal.
Your organization will be at a competitive disadvantage if you do not employ this level of rigor in your sales pursuits. Trust me, it works and I have closed many large multi-million $$$$ deals (including this one – YES, the above example was A WIN!) using this technique at many of the world’s leading firms.